More VISIBILITY for BIDDING activity

[johnwash1]

I think you get the blinking blue b's for busy auctions.

I think you get blinking anything on a page and it drives away potential users. Every book on interface design I've read (and I've read more than a few) agrees that blinking is a big NO. You reserve it for use in really important situations, you don't spatter it about over pages in the mistaken belief it creates interest.

To return to your topic, this is just one symptom of many that this site needs a major overhaul, both in presentation and in usability.

Any ideas on how to convince the site owners?

[madelaine]

"Any ideas on how to convince the site owners?"

Each time I have tried to impress something important on the site owners, it has taken enormous effort and I should really have kept some of the emails that have passed between us. They did not appear to come from the nice people we think of as G&M!

[rainbowseeker]

I'm not disputing what buyers would see, or what this thread is about, I was just confused why you as the seller had a problem finding which items had a bid on them.
I mentioned pheebay because you mentioned the problem there.

I think you get the blinking blue b's for busy auctions.

It's just different ways of working I guess, I rarely log out, & always check My eBid summary first. Then I always worked that way when I used feebay. I get lost there now, I use it so rarely.

Yes .... it is all in how we use the site and operate. I shut down my whole system on a regular basis and I know some people don't. And I tend to do what I have been doing for 10 years now.....and normally I don't log in unless I am working. Instead I come in just like a browsing buyer would.

As a side note...with what they are doing right now with beta searches on the darkside that you can't opt out of, more and more buyers are now being driven away and it is easier for us as sellers there to herd them this way. So it really would be nice if the blinking no reserve signs on the ebid auctions disappeared ASAP....like yesterday in fact...... and bids became easier to see. We all know that buyers are more comfortable with what is familar to them and it would be nice if we could hatch a whole new crop of comfortable buyers.

This is all about retail marketing.....not just about what is comfortable for us as sellers. Blinking no no's or not..... more important ...... let us see the bids.... PLEASE! And please do it now while the time is ripe to attact the maximum amount of disgruntled buyers. And while you are making bids more visible, please loose the migraine creating blinking r's and the red..... I don't have reserves and I don't like the implication on my auction in red and blinking that I do!

And what constitutes a blinking blue b "busy" auction? Where is the key to all these blinking icons? Anybody know?

[rainbowseeker]

Bump

[redmerlin777]

Come on Guys......

Browsers need to see where the bids are....

Don't perpetuate the myth that nothing sells on eBid... because it does.

I agree that really we need some overhaul ... the change to blue was very welcome and looked more user friendly... .
The after sales log is BRILLIANT... everything all together and a nice record can be kept of each transaction.... but contact between buyer and seller to a newbie buyer looks daunting ... it takes some time to get used to the system and find responses....which may put buyers off a little.

Also an easily printable invoice would be most welcome. I still haven't quite got this down to a fine art it always seems a bit of a chore.

[cornishmaid1961]

I'll second that Red Merlin.

Come on G & M how big does a poll have to get for action to be taken? Surely there are enough bids coming in now to warrant a change?

I know I'm getting a few more bids now so I hope other's are too!
Showing bids does create interest and you know what a nosey lot we are here and it might well encourage others to use auction format instead of just buy it now.

I don't know anything about the technical side but I wouldn't have thought it wouldn't be a huge job just to get the price to at least flick to a different colour when it has a bid?

P.S. Pottery & china index figures are still showing the wrong numbers! Nag !

[0ctavias0fferings]

I see there are 80 votes now

[crazymama]

94 and counting

[LadyAutumnStar]

Maybe someone suggested this already, if so, I do apologize for the redundancy, but how about changing the color of the font/price from red to green when there is a bid or bids on an item? Would or could that work? Just a thought...

http://us.nine.ebid.net/perl/main.cg...tments-at-Ebid

[sdk]

[...]how about changing the color of the font/price from red to green when there is a bid or bids on an item? Would or could that work? Just a thought...

I would think it should be a doddle* to implement this.

As for 'would it work' - I think that it would be an easy way to for users to easily identify which items had bids, once they understood what the colour change meant. Except for those with colour blindness issues, naturally.

Whether it 'would work' in terms of highlighting the fact that there is bidding activity (which is what we're talking about here), in order to generate some excitement: I would say 'maybe not.' It would, IMO, be a good 'halfway house,' though. Used in combination with some other highlighting technique, it might just do the trick.

Although I'm in general agreement with the previous poster who says that "blinking and flashing is a no-no," my own view is that if we're going to have some blinking (as in the 'no reserve' blinking icon) on the eBid site then it would be better to have this used on items that have bids.

(I suspect that the 'no reserve' blinking icon was originally intended to draw attention to the 'no reserve' status, and at the time it wasn't thought that so many of the listings would fall into this category.)

Just my tuppence.

* Doddle: technical term, meaning 'really really easy.'